


La Douleur Exquise

by orphan_account



Series: threads of memory [4]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ling being angsty, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25786663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: La Douleur Exquise(n.) The heartbreaking pain of wanting someone you can’t have.
Relationships: Lan Fan/Ling Yao
Series: threads of memory [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883734
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	La Douleur Exquise

**Author's Note:**

> This got way more angsty than I had first anticipated.

Ling sighed. Every time he tried to sleep, there was always a little voice at the back of his subconscious. He wasn’t insane, he knew (at least, not yet); the voice was a simple reflection of the parts of his subconscious that he tried to push away. It wasn’t Greed’s voice. He knew it wasn’t. That was impossible—he’d seen Greed disintegrate with his own eyes. Still…

No.

He tried to think of something else, anything else. His mind, his traitorous mind, happened upon Lan Fan.

The little voice chose that moment to speak up. _You’re just being greedy_ , it hissed. _Greedy, greedy, greedy. First to be the ruler of a country, and now you want love? What avarice!_

_NO,_ Ling thought fiercely. _Doesn’t everyone want love? It’s a basic human instinct!_

The little voice gave a hissing laugh. _Are you sure Greed ever left?_

_He did, I saw it! He sacrificed himself, there is no more of Greed inside me, none at all._ There couldn’t be.

_Oh? Greed and greed are two different things. Perhaps Greed left a lasting affect on you, one you can never rid yourself of!_

_He didn’t! I am Ling Yao, Emperor of Xing. I rule for the people. Greed is gone, and there is none of him left!_

_Then why are you_ still _so greedy? You want love, you want Lan Fan. You want freedom from the rules that have stood in place for so long because YOU ARE GREEDY—_

“BUT EVERYONE WANTS LOVE!” Ling sat up, breathing heavily. He wasn’t Greed, he wasn’t greedy, _he wasn’t—_

“Young Lord?”

He looked up. Lan Fan stood in the doorway, kunai at the ready. Her mask was gone, left behind in her haste to get to his side. Moonlight from the tall windows in the side wall bathed her in stripes of pale moonlight, glinting on her automail and the weapon in her hand.

“Young Lord, I heard you yell something. Are you all right?” Her eyes were wide and searching, showing no emotion except concern for his safety, because she was _his_ bodyguard, _his_ Lan Fan, _his—_

He shook his head to clear it. Again with the possessiveness—he was thinking like Greed again. That _had_ to stop—he couldn’t continue to rule a country like this. “I’m fine. Sorry for waking you.”

Her eyes lowered and she bowed deeply, bangs all but obscuring her pitch-dark eyes, which still showed signs of concern. “This one apologizes for disturbing you. Shall this one be going now?”

A wave of resentment, not at Lan Fan, but at the rules that made her—a woman every bit his equal in all but status—bow so deeply when she entered his presence, welled up inside him. “You may go. Thanks, Lan Fan.”

She backed out of the door, eyes still on the floor, kunai still ready in her hand. As soon as she was out of sight, Ling heaved a sigh and flopped back down on his bed. He could ignore this. He had ignored it for years, thrust it to the back of his mind, putting duty and honor and _tradition_ before himself. 

Well, tradition could go _hang_ itself. 

No, hanging was much too lenient—tradition ought to be dragged through the streets behind an untamed stallion, locked in a barrel lined with broken glass and filled with several angry weasels. Now _that_ was a fitting punishment. 

He was still speculating exactly how _many_ weasels (should he add some hornets as well?) when Lan Fan appeared in the doorway again, hurriedly slipping into another _blasted_ bow. The bowing could be sent to the hornets, he decided—tradition was for the weasels.

“A thousand apologies, Young Lord, but are you truly all right? Your qi is…” There was a pause. “Twisted. You seem to be in a state of great distress.”

How had she known? Well, this was Lan Fan, the most talented reader of the Dragon’s Pulse he knew. She could sense the general mood of every guard posted in this wing of the Imperial Palace. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that she could tell, it was just a surprise that she had said something about it. Usually, she tried to avoid any and all conversation.

“...Young Lord?” Her voice was slightly muffled; she was still in a bow, forehead nearly touching the thick rugs under her feet.

He snapped out of his thoughts. “I’m all right. Just a bad dream, is all.”

She looked up, her face still knit with concern. In one fluid motion, she had crossed to his bedside, resting the back of her flesh hand on his forehead. “No fever,” she murmured, half to herself. Then, seeming to realize that she had just touched him, she leaped back as if stung and pressed her forehead to the carpet again. “This one’s thousand apologies, Emperor,” she said hurriedly. “You do not have a fever, so sickness has not interfered with your qi.” She waited the required five seconds before rising to her feet again.

The place on his forehead where she had laid her hand seemed to burn. “I’m not sick. I told you, it was just a bad dream.”

Her left eye twitched slightly. She didn’t believe him. The question was, would she inquire further? Part of him hoped so, just so she would stay a little longer.

_There you go, being greedy again,_ the little voice whispered gleefully.

_Shut up,_ he thought firmly. _I am the one in control of my thoughts. Now, think about camels._ He began thinking as hard as he could about the distasteful, smelly beasts. He, Mei, and Lan Fan had each ridden one across the desert, and he had detested the things. They spat, tread in their own fecal matter, snorted violently without warning, and seemed to like the taste of his bangs, which had soon become slimy with camel slobber and hadn’t seemed to be completely clean until they had finally arrived in Xing. _Camels,_ he thought fiercely. _Not greed. Or Greed. Camels._

“If you say you are well, this one will not disturb you further,” she said quietly, bowing again and backing out of the room once more. 

It was growing harder and harder to keep his mind focused firmly on camels.

Ling groaned as quietly as he could and pressed his face into his pillow. The cool silk was a comfort, but not nearly enough. He flopped onto his back; maybe sleep would come now.

_Don’t think about Lan Fan,_ he thought fiercely. _It’s absolutely no use._

Unfortunately, the little voice had other ideas. _Greedy, greedy, greedy!_ it sang. _You don’t want her for the good of anyone else. Not for the good of your country. Just you and your greed!_

“But that’s what love _is_ ,” he muttered into his pillow. “Ed didn’t marry Winry for the good of anyone else. Winry didn’t _accept_ for the good of anyone else. They wanted each other, they _loved_ each other, and that was enough of a reason.”

_But that’s not the same. It can’t ever be the same,_ it cackled. _When you became Emperor, you gave up any chance you had at real love—_

Ling pressed the pillow to his face. “Gah!”

This wasn’t working. He needed to get out of here, clear his head. 

He carefully got up, slipping his feet into his soft-soled slippers. In this area of the Imperial Palace, many of the hallways were lined with intentionally creaky floorboards to alert guards to any intruders. As much as he appreciated this in its use of, say, preventing his assassination, it did get a bit annoying when he had to move through the building silently. Fu had taught him and Lan Fan both the art of moving quickly without making a sound—Lan Fan was better at it, naturally, but he was no heavyfooted blunderer. 

The trick was to stay on one’s toes and take light, leaping strides, like a dancer. He had always thought he looked rather silly doing it, but it _did_ work, at least in most cases. But he didn’t have time for that now, and besides, the six guards stationed all down the hall would catch him before he made it too far. That left one other option. 

Slipping past a woven screen painted with dragons in a peach orchard, Ling found what he was looking for—a thick wooden door set into the wall of his apartment. It was virtually impossible to open without one of the keys—and considering that Ling had one and Lan Fan had the other, the likelihood of acquiring one was next to none. 

The key was on a thin piece of silk cord around his neck, as it always was. Lan Fan’s was stashed in one of the many pockets of her black gi. Carefully inserting the key into the lock, he twisted. He felt the mechanisms spring open with barely a click. Placing the cord back around his neck, he tucked it out of sight down the front of his robes. Whipping the door open as fast as he could to prevent any creaking, Ling slipped through it and closed it again in barely a second. 

The Shadow’s Run was a narrow, creaky-board-free stretch of hallway that ran parallel to the main hallway. Sandwiched between the line of rooms on the left side of the main hallway to the right and the outer hallway to the left, it was virtually undetectable. Only someone with a detailed floor plan of the palace would know that its existence was even possible.

Even though the boards weren’t intentionally creaky like in the main hallways, Ling still took care to be as silent as humanly possible while making his way down the Run. Lan Fan’s room had a connecting door as well, after all. He wouldn’t put it past her to be able to hear him through the fog of sleep and an entire wall. 

After several minutes of agonizingly light steps, Ling was finally faced with the door to the Jinlong Garden. Narrow and hidden behind a curtain of ivy, the door was nearly impossible to find from the outside—and again, if anyone were to ever come across it, he and Lan Fan were the only ones in possession of a key.

Impatiently brushing the curtain of leaves and vines aside, he breathed deeply, trying to memorize the smell of the garden at night. Jasmine blossoms, oranges, and the smell of fresh water—that was the Jinlong Garden. It was one of the smaller gardens encompassed within the Imperial Palace, only about thirty feet by thirty feet and surrounded on three sides by an outer hallway lined with columns. The fourth side was the one with the secret door, and was nearly completely covered by jasmine and ivy. 

In the center of the garden was a round basin filled with cool, still water. In the middle of it was a small stone dragon statue lined with gold enameling—it was positioned to look like the dragon was rising out of the water in the basin, head tilted towards the moon above, pale silver moonlight glinting off the gold on its snout and back. At each corner of the garden was a large, square bed of mulch with three small orange trees in each, bordered by a low wall of flowering bushes. Walkways made of jade and granite tiles covered the rest of the garden. 

Ling made no attempt to silence his footsteps as he walked forward. Even Lan Fan couldn’t hear him out here. There was a legend, he remembered, about this garden. The Golden Dragon Emperor had commissioned it to be made in his honor, hence the name and the statue. Apparently, he had liked the little corner of the palace so much that he had created the Shadow’s Run to be able to visit it from his own quarters at any time of day, along with his faithful Shadow.

He braced his hands on either side of the basin and looked down at the little golden dragon. It stared back placidly with blank, unseeing eyes. There were a few differences between him and the Golden Dragon Emperor, Ling mused. First of all, his Shadow was near the bottom of the list of people he wanted to be with him in this garden. Her presence would only remind him of what was lost, what he had given up the second he had presented the Philosopher’s Stone to the old Emperor, who had been mere days away from death at the time. His father had wasted no time in naming him as Emperor, although the official ceremony had taken place weeks later. 

Then, he had still been reeling from Fu’s death and his mind was constantly running through his plan to accept all of the clans again and again, so he hadn’t fully taken into account several of the effects this action would have on his life until he had named Lan Fan as his Emperor’s Shadow. The spot had never been taken by a woman before, but the Imperial court soon learned that that small break in tradition was not going to be the last Ling Yao made. His decision to accept all of the clans, of course, was one of the more shocking ones, as well as his refusal of the Fifty Wives. He was seventeen, for the First Emperor’s sake—he didn’t need _one_ wife anytime soon, much less _fifty_ . Besides, he had seen firsthand the havoc _that_ system wreaked on the Royal Children—no child of his would never see his father’s face or have to live in constant fear of their siblings.

He and Lan Fan were impossible, anyway. It was the simplest of facts: no matter how much of this weasel-beset _tradition_ he broke down under his (hopefully lengthy) reign, it was impossible to have a bodyguard become Empress. 

He glared down at his dark reflection. The shadow of his face glared back. He couldn’t ever, _ever,_ have that which he wanted more than anything. Even with all the power in Xing, he couldn’t bend enough rules, couldn’t break down enough tradition to be with her. That one simple thing: to hold her in his arms, to stroke her dark hair, to even _kiss_ her—that was impossible. They could never be more than Emperor and bodyguard. What was it that Greed had always said?

_Everyone wants something they can’t have._

Well, that sure was true, if he was any example. If it made him greedy, fine! He _loved_ Lan Fan, he _wanted_ her so badly it hurt, he _wanted_ to destroy the centuries-old barriers that prevented him from ever being with her. 

Ling immediately cursed himself rather colorfully for indulging in the thoughts he’d pushed so far to the back of his mind.

He was so involved in deciding whether his face was best described as that of a silver carp or a Balkhash perch that he didn’t even notice the faint presence of a familiar qi behind him until she spoke.

“Young Lord?”

He whirled around. There, standing just in front of the wall of ivy, was the person he simply couldn’t keep from entering his mind, not even with thoughts of camels, old Emperors, and various river fish. Lan Fan was wearing her mask this time, half of it shadowed by her black hood. As soon as he turned, she dropped to the ground and pressed her forehead to the jade and granite tiles. “This one gives a thousand apologies for interrupting, Emperor,” she said hurriedly. “This one can leave now, if this one’s presence is not allowed.”

Ling rubbed his forehead underneath his bangs and tried not to sigh. Even when no one was there to hear, she was so achingly formal. He missed the time they had spent in Amestris, where she had finally allowed her court mask to slip somewhat and hadn’t used the traditional self-indicators. He would have missed it more, had his body not been inhabited by a homunculus for much of the time, Lan Fan hadn’t had to cut off her own arm, and Fu hadn’t been murdered. 

Well, perhaps he didn’t miss Amestris as much as he thought. 

“It’s all right, Lan Fan,” he said quietly. “If I may ask, how did you know I had come here?”

She hesitated a bit before responding. “It was Your Imperial Majesty’s qi, Emperor. This one sensed you leaving your room and was concerned for your safety.” Her voice was muffled, blocked as it was by a porcelain mask and her face being pressed to the hard tile.

Of course. How could he have forgotten about that? Even if she had been asleep when he had left, she could still sense qi through her subconscious. As far as Ling knew, she was the only person in the entire court who could, except perhaps a few of the more skilled alkahestrists. “I thank you for your concern, Lan Fan. But I’m fine. I’ll be back inside in a few minutes.”

Lan Fan sensed his unspoken request and slowly rose to her feet. “Yes, Imperial Highness.” She turned and slipped behind the curtain of ivy again, her qi still pulsing with concern. 

“Lan Fan,” he heard himself say. It was almost as if Greed were speaking through his body again, forcing him to say things in a voice that wasn’t his own. He’d hated that feeling.

She immediately reappeared, right hand already halfway to the kunai strapped to her thigh. “Yes, Young Lord?”

He sighed, the two sides of his mind warring with each other. He glanced at her face, at the pitch-dark eyes glittering behind the bold lines of the Yang mask. “Nothing. Sorry. You can go.” 

She bowed again, and made her exit. This time, he could sense her qi moving back down the Shadow’s Run: a swirling presence of ink and mercury, darkness and moonlight. The same qi of the young girl he’d shared peaches with in the Imperial Grove, the girl who blushed furiously at the slightest provocation. The same qi of the girl who had cut off her own arm to help him escape from a host of immortal creatures hell-bent on killing them both. The same qi of the bodyguard always a pace behind him, crouched in the shadows behind his throne, all but anonymous behind that porcelain mask. It was so familiar, and always so close by. So near, and yet so far away.

**Author's Note:**

> All comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated!


End file.
